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Early Soundboard 8.6 - High energy; it does get a little "hot" as far as the mix but it doesn't detract from the experience of hearing Van Halen in a small club playing their asses off before they hit the big time. Dave is in fine form, as always. A great gig, a very good recording, a great band at a great time. Highly recommended.
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Audience 7.0 -7.3 - Why the funky rating? Because what started out as a dismal audience tape has slowly over the years morphed into a listenable show. Why would you care? Because 1978 shows KILL! If you loved and miss the vintage Eddie Van Halen signature between riff fills that he used to dish out effortlessly, than get this one because later he began relying too much on tried and true signature frills and less and less on inventing killer little hooky lead fills on the spot. This show has them, and you can hear them, and it’s weird because this tape has a very strange dynamic to it where the sound channel down the middle opens up enough to let Eddie’s sound permeate and even float around a little above the din of the bass and kick. So the re-mastering addressed some of that by dropping some of the low and low mid boom and attenuating the upper mids and highs with multi-band compression. It helped a lot. Still kind of rough but actually the show is so interesting and just enough above being not listenable that it will still suck you right in and you will actually play it all the way through. I promise that. I did, without regrets.
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Soundboard 8.8 - A loud board mix, with a little crispiness in the ultra high frequency but what this actually translates to as the show plays is CRUNCH factor which helps liven up what could have been a flat, lifeless board tape. The remastering helped because the levels were kind of low, and the bass needed to be dialed back just a tick, but just that light touch really made this tape a whole point better. Fantastic prime era Halen comin’ out yer speakers like lightning bolts. MUST HAVE!!!
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Audience 7.8 - A MAJOR upgrade here folks! This recording used to suffer a horrible low mid range boom and muddiness that killed an otherwise decent tape and really good performance capture. Now, even though it is still roughly an average tape, it is minus that deal-breaking boom/mud in the middle. Apparently, the recording being in stereo, while mastering they found by moving it wider (stereo panning) they got the affected channel muted enough where it was crap sounding, but saved what music was there. It worked wonders. Now this tape is worth your time, so rediscover it today.
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Audience 7.9 - This tape shows its age but the master source for this CD is actually an old vinyl boot long since lost to the mists of time. Glad to have it, although I think only hard core collectors will really see the value here. That is not to say its dogshit either, because at times its actually very decent, but it fluctuates also back to mediocre, and that may be due to the tapers having to move or hide their equipment. I still like this one, and I think most Sabbath collectors will appreciate it.
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Audience 7.4 - Interesting to listen to this, it’s almost like they are performing on a soundstage, but the quality is only so-so. I do not know what to make of it, my instinct says this was a TV broadcast, maybe this was recorded off the TV volume? It’s not too bad, just not a very wide dynamic range.